Paradiddle Grooves

Page 1 preview

Paradiddle grooves are tricky customers as they combine an irregular snare and hi-hat patterns (which is difficult in itself) with bass drums falling with both right and left hands. However, what makes them difficult is also what makes them worth practicing. They are great for improving your coordination and independence.

The exercises are based on accented paradiddles and paradiddle inversions, so familiarise yourself with those before attempting these. Otherwise you’re going to have a hard time!

As always, I recommend you practice with a metronome.

1. Grooves 1-3 use the paradiddle (1), inverted paradiddle (2) and reverse paradiddle (3) for the snare and hi-hat parts. For the sake of simplicity I've used the same bass drum pattern in each groove. If you struggle with the coordination, simplify the grooves by ignoring the ghost note and accents. You can add them back in once the groove feels more natural to play.

2. Grooves 4-6 combine half a bar of two different paradiddles. ‘4’ combines the paradiddle and inverted paradiddle, ‘5’ the paradiddle and reverse paradiddle, and ‘6’ the inverted paradiddle and reverse paradiddle. Again, I've used the same bass drum pattern in each groove.

3. Grooves 7 & 8 feature the paradiddle, inverted paradiddle and reverse paradiddle in a random order. I have also changed the bass drum pattern in each example. It's a good idea to get comfortable with the groove's sticking pattern before adding the bass drums.

4. Grooves 9-11 incorporate ideas from the Accented Paradiddles lesson, which results in displaced snare accents — accents that are no longer exclusively on the second and forth beat of the bar. These grooves are fun to play but technically challenging. As with the previous exercises, start with the sticking pattern before adding the bass drums.

5. Once you can play 1-11, get creative. These grooves are just examples so try changing the bass drum patterns or moving the accents to different parts of the beat to make your own variations.

👉 Download PDF / How I Write Drum Notation